Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
E lijah. Sunday
I didn’t know what it was about my past, but lately, it seemed as if it was always with me. When it wasn’t intruding on me, I was tripping over it.
Piatt Park, the oldest park in the city, was one of my favorite places to jog. Running under the archways with the trees reaching over from either side like green awnings, it was like being on a movie location. I should have had my phone in my sweatshirt pocket and my headphones on, piping some appropriate music for the moment into my head. But, if I’d been running and listening to music, I might not have spotted her sitting at one of the tables along the paved pathway that made the scene complete.
There she was, looking like a fashion model as always, but not one of those runway models who was just skin and bones. She had curves up and down her body to match the curves of her hair. She was nibbling away at a Cobb salad with chicken, pretending she didn’t see me.
The pretense stung a bit. As sadly as we’d parted, did Kathleen really have to ignore me when she saw me? There was a time when she would have looked at me in my sweatshirt, shorts, and sneakers and had a look in her eyes as if I were the only man in the world. It would have put a look in Kathleen’s eyes that said, Fuck me now. And, I would have done it.
I would have had her back in my penthouse in nothing flat. Since I wouldn’t really want to bang a woman when all sweaty from jogging, but since her need for my cock wouldn’t wait, I would have invited Kathleen into my shower with me, where there was more than enough room for two. After letting her lather me up and rinse me off, she would have dropped to her knees, where I’d let her make a snack of the meat between my legs that she’d enjoy a lot more than the lean chicken in her salad.
Then, on the wet tiles of my shower, I’d have her down on her back with legs up in the air. I’d get down on all-fours between those thighs and slip into her pussy what she’d just had in her mouth, harder than the tiles I was fucking her on. We’d move from there to a toweling-off in my bedroom and from there to my bed, where I’d give her some more urgent humping.
But, those days were over. They’d been over for a while because while my body and my boner made Kathleen happy enough, she couldn’t live with my past. It was just something I’d had to reluctantly accept.
Still, the fact that she would let me run by and not even want to acknowledge my presence was painful. I couldn’t ignore the pang of hurt. So, in mid-stride, I stopped and faced her, keeping myself right there in front of her where she couldn’t look through me without it being obvious.
Showing her what she’d given up, reminding her of what she used to enjoy so much, I said, “Kathleen. Don’t I even get a hello?”
She looked up from her salad as if I were a casual acquaintance, not the man who used to fuck her into the middle of next week and said, without enthusiasm, “Elijah. Hello.”
I dared to take a couple of steps closer, to see what she would do. She didn’t move. But, she also didn’t act any happier to see me. “Look,” I said, “can’t we be civil, at least? Just because we’re not together any more, do you have to act like I don’t even exist?”
She didn’t answer me in words. She just sort of tilted her head, slumped her shoulders, and sighed in the way that meant that even though there was something we needed to talk about, she didn’t want to be bothered with it.
Frustrated, I put one hand on my hip and brushed through my hair with the other. “Okay, let me put the words in here. This is where you bring up how worried you are that someone from my past, who I’ve told you I’ve cut loose, is going to come out of the bushes and attack us. I know that conversation by heart, Kathleen. It’s no more true now than it was then. I’m not that person any more. I was working hard on not being that guy when we were together. I’m never going to be that guy again.”
“Elijah, you know how I feel about all that. The past doesn’t just go away. You might think it’s gone, but it can always come back. When I brought up marriage and you decided then to tell me about your old life, which you’d never brought up before-”
Holding up my hands to stop her, I finished, “I know, I know. You felt misled and deceived, like you’d never really known me, like I’d gone into our relationship under false pretenses and I would have never mentioned it if you hadn’t mentioned marriage, yada yada yada…”
That got a rise out of her. She frowned hard at me and looked as if she wanted to stab me with her plastic salad fork. “On no! You do not get to ‘yada yada yada’ with me! You do not get to brush off my feelings that way!
“When I heard about the kind of life you used to live and the kind of people you used to associate with — that Kane person, who makes my skin crawl just remembering the things you told me about him… I told you I couldn’t be associated with anyone from a background like that, and I meant it!”
Her outburst left us both in silence. I just stood there, staring at her, scratching at the back of my neck. It was like the last day of our relationship, all over again.
Kathleen was no longer interested in her salad or in talking to me. She got up, tossed the rest of the salad into the garbage can next to her table, and straightened her skirt, prepared to walk out of my life again after these few uncomfortable minutes that she was back in it.
“I have to go, Elijah,” she said, returning to the flat, cold tone of a moment ago. “Best of luck.”
I called to her back — that beautiful back with the hair tumbling down it that matched the shade of my own hair as perfectly as I’d thought she matched my life — “I’ll never be that guy again, Kathleen! He’s gone, never coming back!”
But, neither was Kathleen. This chance encounter had proven that to me. Kathleen and I would never again be what we were.
My shower waited for me back at my apartment. But, I knew in no uncertain terms that I would not be screwing the woman I once thought I’d share the rest of my life with in that shower again.
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Alone on my empty bed in my empty apartment, with nothing but a towel wrapped around me after my shower, I almost wished that the lie I’d told Kane about having a German Shepherd guard dog were true. At least the imaginary “Molly” would be some kind of company. Not the kind of company that I most wanted and needed, but company just the same. And, Molly would never have held my past against me.
Wearily, I picked up my phone and texted my sister.
Ran into Kathleen. No wonder Mom and Dad liked her so much. She’s just as disgusted by my past as I am. I frowned at having to include Mom in that, but it was true. She would always act like a loving mother, but she’d never forget how much I used to disappoint her. I’ll always be a lowlife in Kathleen’s eyes. I think every woman I ever meet feel be that way.
Sarah’s reply came with a sad face emoji. They’re the ones missing out. But, why do you care what Kathleen thinks? I don’t want to say the girl was high-maintenance, but you’d just end up spending all your money on her upkeep. She was crazy, anyway.
It was just what I needed right then. I could always count on Sarah for a laugh at exactly the right time.